


Traitor's Dilemma

by Romanumeternal



Series: Random stories from the People's Republic of Rome [11]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Bankruptcy, Non-Sexual Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-23 18:56:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18707980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Romanumeternal/pseuds/Romanumeternal
Summary: It is the year 2665, and the People's Republic of Rome is ruled by Hallarticus, Perpetual Dictator.Two slaves see their chance for freedom - but is the cost too high?





	Traitor's Dilemma

He looks tired, these days, Asinius reflects.

He studies his dominus. The jowls are sagging, the bags under his now watery eyes sagging. Gray hair is thinning, above a face that seems to have acquired a gray shade itself. His voice is now little more than a rasp, low, passionless. 

No, Asinius considers. He looks worse than tired. A grey shadow of the man he'd once been. He watches, concerned, as his dominus reaches out a trembling hand and takes the mug of warm wine.

He drinks too much, too, thinks Asinius, but he doesn't say that. It's not a slave's place to, after all. Just as it isn't his place to point out gently that he should eat more, or to mention that every day he seems slightly thinner. 

"Have my guests gone?" his dominus asks. Asinius nods, trying to keep his expression from his face. Most of all, it is not his place to stop his dominus from these late night meetings at his home. He knows full well what is said at them, and knows furthermore that no matter how pointless those meetings really are, how little power the participants truly possess, it won't matter when They come, when the Eyes kick down doors in the dead of night. A brutal interrogation and a slave-camp for his family and the slaves - if they're lucky. Shooting for the dominus - if he's lucky.

And if they're not, and the Eyes wish to make an example? Crucifixion, or burning, or beating to death, or some other hideous fate.

"Yes, dominus".

His dominus sighs. "Good." He looks out, swallowing too much of the wine. Some of it dribbles down his lips, splattering onto his green tunic.  He doesn't notice. "I should probably retire. I have a rally to address tomorrow."

He says this bitterly, and no wonder. As town Prefect, he will be expected to speak at the 'People's Rally' tomorrow, the black and green and white banner of the Vanguard Party behind him. He will be expected to praise Hallarticus, denounce all traitors and shirkers, demand an intensification of the War. And in the audience will be the Eyes, and the Eyes, as the slogan says, are always watching. Particularly so with him, of course. His last patron, the influential Galba, had made the mistake of questioning Hallarticus when first he came to power, denouncing him as little more than a drunken, disgraced rabble-rouser. Now his mansion is occupied by a minor member of the Party, Galba's family are nothing more than slaves if still they live, and Galba himself has vanished from the face of the Earth. 

"I'm sure you will do a fine job, dominus" Asinius says, though privately he doubts it. No doubt, though, so long as he sicks to the script, he will get cheers and applause. These days no one would be foolish enough to fail to clap whenever the name of the Perpetual Dictator is mentioned. 

"Praise that man? Our Great, Beloved and Glorious Guide and Leader? I'm no better than the meanest slave. Once, free Romans could speak as they pleased."

"Indeed, dominus" says Asinius. He is a slave, and has always been one. The idea of speaking purely as one finds strikes him as near lunacy. He has always had to watch his words. For a moment, he feels a stab of sour satisfaction at the thought that his master, a citizen of the greatest state on Earth, must speak as any craven slave, singing involuntary praise of his dominus.

His dominus stands up. "Is Tiberius-?"

Asinius nods. "Indeed, Dominus. Sleeping soundly." That's a partial lie. He is sleeping, sure, but only thanks to a sleeping draught, and from his twitching and mewing at night Asinius reckons his sleep is clouded by nightmares; as his days are blighted with pain. Some in the town say that at least Tullius Othius Sedna was lucky in that his son came back from the Northern Front. Those people, Asiunius thinks, haven't seen the twisted, mauled human wreckage the Volkish partisans left alive, screaming and howling in the ice and snow. Death, he thinks, would have been kinder. 

"Maybe tomorrow he will feel a little more himself." He says this, Asinius reckons, most nights, and by now he must know that nothing will ever make that true. "Perhaps we should take him to the park. He...he always used to like that. Do you remember?"

He says this, or something similar, most nights too. At first, Asinius had felt a most unservile stab of sympathy at the evident misery in his dominus' eyes; the tears forming in the eyes of a proud Roman man as he contemplated the ruin of his only son. Now, though, he feels only a slight irritation. It's weakness, he thinks, weakness and too much wine; an inability to admit his son who had been his pride and joy was gone, leaving only a pain wracked, broken, burned bed-bound cripple behind; whose eyes show no emotion other than horror, who seems to have forgotten everything- friends, family, even himself - save agony.

It was when he saw what remained of his son, Asinius reckons, that what remained of Sedna's faith in Hallarticus died.

Nonetheless, he nods. "Of course, dominus."

Sedna turns, and almost bumps into Servilla, who had been checking, as she does every night, that the windows and doors are locked.

"Your pardon, dominus" she says.

"No matter." He touches her, affectionately, on the shoulder. She smiles softly. 

"Good night, dominus" she says.

As he turns to leave the kitchen, Asinius sees her face change; twisting into a sneer of contempt.

"Night dominus" he says.

They wait until he had mounted the stairs before they talk, in low, hushed voices in the dark; the same way they swore their informal marriage vows in front of the Lararium, the same way they first kissed and made love.

"It's written" she says. She says this with a triumphant inflection to her tone. "Hidden underneath the paving, as agreed. You are in town tomorrow, right? Should be a simple matter to post it then."

Asinius nods. 

"Yes" he says, woodenly. He's retraced the path he will take over and over again. A small postbox, in a quiet alley. Likely no one will see him posting the letter.

"Good." She looks at him. "Don't worry. I didn't change a word from what we agreed." Her voice is exultant but her hands, Asinius notices, are restless. Fingers twist around each other.

"Second thoughts?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "Fuck no. Gods, I can't wait to see their fucking faces."

The letter is a denunciation - and a well crafted one, at that. It has names, places, times, dates, all of them true, or at least not disprovable. Every word against the war, every eye roll when Hallarticus is mentioned, every overheard whisper when Sedna meets with his friends to curse the regime. The punishments for a false, or politically inconvenient, denunciation are dire, but a true one,  or at least one which the authorities have been looking for...well, the papers are full of 'patriotic slaves' who denounce their owners for disloyalty - and their rewards.

Asinius doesn't mind thinking about the rewards - freedom, money - but he does mind thinking about their faces. His dominus's look of doubtless stupefied misery, followed by hurt betrayal, as the Vigilium drag him away. His wife breaking down in tears as she realises the fate that doubtless awaits her and her daughter, reduced to mere property as the family members of Enemies of the State as the iron collars snap around their necks. Alba's sobs as her short life collapses around her. Only Tiberius, he thinks, might not actually care. 

"Just imagine it" she gloats. "They'll regret every fucking thing they ever did to us." She cocks her head, and smiles. "I have a small amphora of wine I've kept for tomorrow. We'll drink it tomorrow, after you've posted it."

For a moment, Asinius says nothing, and then:

"Are we...are we absolutely sure we want to do this?"

Servilla looks at him.

"What?"

"Once we send it, there's no going back."

"We discussed this" she says, sharply. "It's worth the risk. I'm not living as a slave forever." She glances down at her belly, which has just lately begun to very slightly show. "And neither...neither is my child." She swallows. "I'd rather die than let my child be just fucking property."

"It's just..." Asinius begins. "Look, maybe...maybe we should ask first. We don't have to denounce them."

"Ask? Ask our dominus for our freedom?"

"He...he might give it."

She sniffs. "Fuck to that. As though he will." She looks at him,her face a mask of scorn. "Don't tell me you're thinking of backing out."

He pauses, nodding upstairs.

"If we send that letter, Servilla...we destroy them. Not just him. All of them."

She merely looks confused. He pauses, trying to clarify his words. 

"Gods know I want to be free as much as you do. And Gods know I'd die to make our child that. But them upstairs....?" He swallows. "They've been good to us, Servilla. You know as well as I do that we have enough to eat. He's never touched you, they've never threatened to sell us, Gods we've both stashed some money away..." he trails off, slowly, under Servilla's incredulous glare.

"Oh Romulus fucking above, spare me!" she hisses. "Just because they don't beat us and rape us doesn't make them good. They own us, Asinius. We're just their fucking property in their eyes, and just because they could be worse..." she shakes her head. "You know what? I hate them. I hate the fact that I'm their property. I hate that fact that my whole life I've done nothing but serve other people. And now I - Hades, both of us - have this chance, to live our own lives, and you want to back out? Because you don't want to ruin the lives of people who just see us as tools?" She sighs. "I thought you were more of a man than that. But no, you'll go bowing and scraping and being grateful for fucking scraps from your betters."

Asinius' mouth clenches, whilst she smirks a smirk of satisfaction. She glances around, flicking a lock of dark hair out of her eyes. 

"I won't, Asinius. I won't be a good meek little slave who if she's very good and very lucky will be freed at forty five just to die at fifty. I won't teach my child to think of himself as just a tool because he came from the wrong mother. I'm the fucking equal of them upstairs, and I've had enough of them ordering me around. If its a choice between them or us, then I choose us."

"Servilla, I might not like them, but Hades, they hardly deserve the Eyes-"

"-and I didn't deserve to be a slave, and neither did you. No one gets what they deserve unless they have the fucking balls to take it." She looks at him, carefully, and then snorts. "Besides, you've seen the dominus recently, right? Drinking too much, holding those fucking stupid 'meetings' with his friends, whining about the Leader?"

"It's his son, I think" says Asinius. "He wasn't happy, beforehand, I think. About the way things were going, the Vanguard, the War. But at least with his son he had a source of joy. And then the Volkish..." he shrugged.

Servilla sniffs.

"What do I fucking care? I was torn from my family when I was five and my daughter when I was seventeen, you don't see me whining about it. But I reckon its only a matter of time before someone does for him. Fuck, he's an idiot if he doesn't think the Eyes will discover what he talks about at some point." She shrugs. "I'd much prefer its us that do it rather than someone else. We don't want them to think we fucking protected him"

She stands up, looking down at him.

"I won't ask what you're doing to do, Asinius, but know this. It's them or us. Are you on the side of our child and your wife, or the side of a man who owns you?"

There's a long pause, and then -

"Your side, Servilla."

She smiles, triumphantly, and then leans down, kissing Asinius on the forehead.

"Not my side. Our side."

**Author's Note:**

> Hallarticus is one of the most important, as well as divisive figures, in world history. A discharged, disgraced ex-centurion, he seized power in 2644 and was declared 'Perpetual Dictator' the following year, following more than a decade of economic depression, foreign humiliations and political chaos. His reign of terror led to the executions of hundreds of thousands and the enslavement of millions, whilst his foreign policy led directly to the mass slaughter of the Great War which he deliberately prolonged. However, by the time he died in 2668 the People's Republic of Rome was unquestionably a great power once again, with the economy recovering, the power of the old patrician oligarchy broken and the poor wealthier than ever before; as such most Romans nowadays view him with a mixture of admiration for his accomplishments and horror at his methods.


End file.
